


Morning Light

by CherryParfait



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Beth is Daryl's light in the darkness, Canon Compliant, Daryl must've set the table at the funeral home, Developing Relationship, Episode: s04e13 Alone, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Missing Scene, POV Daryl Dixon, Pre-Relationship, Romance, because it's already set when he carries her upstairs, fluff kind of, what a lovestruck fool he is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:41:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28901298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherryParfait/pseuds/CherryParfait
Summary: And she looked at him with those too-blue eyes and there it was again, the lightning.Daryl wakes up at the funeral home, to find that last night's candles are all still burning.[[Some missing moments from "Alone", in which Daryl starts to realize that he's in love.]]
Relationships: Daryl Dixon & Beth Greene, Daryl Dixon/Beth Greene
Comments: 10
Kudos: 31





	Morning Light

**Author's Note:**

> So my last story was nominated for a Moonshine Award over at Ultimate Bethyl Fic List !! I'm really happy and honored to be included in such a fantastic group of writers.
> 
> I've been working on a longer fic lately (not Bethyl-centric I'm afraid, but it does have some Bethyl in it), but I wanted to drop a little something Bethyl as a way to say thank you for the nomination.
> 
> This is set during "Alone", in the morning after Daryl sleeps in the coffin. It's partly inspired by that Norman Reedus quote about how Beth is Daryl's light in the darkness.
> 
> To whoever nominated me-- thank you so much!! It really means a lot to me.

The problem with sleeping in a coffin, it turns out, is that coffins were not made to be opened from the inside.

When Daryl wakes up, everything is dark. Not woke-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night dark, but _dark_ dark. Thick and heavy, can’t-see-for-shit, sensory deprivation kinda dark. It reminds him of being underwater, of drowning. Of the time when he was six and Merle just about smothered him to death under the comforter, because Dad was on a bender again and it was better to be hidden out of sight.

He has a brief, awful moment of panic— _merle, merle what’s goin’ on, what do I do, merle please don’t let him hurt me_ —before he remembers where he is. Funeral home. Coffin. Slept here. Beth.

 _Beth_. She’s out there somewhere, and he’s been in this damn-near soundproof coffin for fuck-knows-how-long. If something had happened in the night, if she’d been hurt, if she’d been screaming, he wouldn’t have even known. _Fuck._ He pushes at the coffin lid but it doesn’t go up easy. _Fuck_.

It takes both his damn feet but he gets the lid open. He had not intended to sleep with it closed, and he wonders at what point in the night the damn thing fell. Thank fuck it wasn't airtight.

Beth is still asleep, curled up tight on the little antique sofa. Safe, quiet. Not a scratch on her. Daryl’d nearly flipped a shit for nothing.

He pries the bars of the window blinds apart, just enough so that he can peek through. It is definitely morning, but it’s still pretty dark. Five o'clock, maybe, if he had to guess. There’s just a thin strip of day on the horizon, not even enough to touch the tops of the trees. The little chapel room is mostly lit by candles— the ones from last night, still red and flickering.

Daryl hadn’t wanted to light them. Too risky. But Beth had insisted.

_“Oh, Daryl look— candles,” she’d said, as they inspected the chapel on arrival. He was looking for danger signs— weapons, or rats maybe. Things that could go wrong. But Beth, of course she’d be seeing somethin’ different._

_“We should light some,” she said._

_First the moonshine shack and now this, for chrissake, this girl is just a walking fire hazard isn’t she? “Damn, Greene, didn’t know that you were such a pyro.”_

_Beth’s mouth dropped open, somewhere between offended and laughing. “Daryl!” she exclaimed. “They’re memorial candles.”_

_“Memorial candles?”_

_“You know, ones you light for people who’ve died.” She hands him one. “They got scripture on ‘em, see?”_

_And sure enough, the glass jar had a bible verse etched on the side:_ Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning. Psalm 30:5. _Hm._

_“I just thought maybe we should light some,” Beth said. “For... well, you know.”_

_Yeah, he knew. “For your dad. For your family.”_

_Beth reached for the candle, and her hand brushed gently over his and something about it made his heart jolt. Felt like sticking a damn fork in a socket. Like lightning._

_“For_ our _family,” she said._

_He jerked his hand away, snorted. “I ain’t lightin’ one of those damn things for Merle,” he told her._

_And she looked at him with those too-blue eyes and there it was again, the lightning. “Wasn’t talkin’ about Merle,” she said._

_Nah, she wasn’t was she? He looked down at his feet. “A’right.”_

_And so they lit candles._

Daryl looks at them now, scattered over every surface in the room. Against all odds, not a single one has burnt out in the night. When Beth lit them she’d assigned each one a name— _Daddy, Mama, Shawn, Patricia, Lori, T-Dog, Andrea, Zach._.. Daryl had added just one— _Sophia_. Neither of them said the names of anyone who had been at the prison. Instead it hovered there in silence— _maybe_. Rick, Glenn, Maggie, Carol, Judith, _maybe, maybe, maybe_.

Beth looks so peaceful in her sleep and Daryl doesn’t want to wake her. She probably needs rest, with her foot hurt like that. Time to recover. Probably needs more food than peanut butter and pig’s feet, too, but that’s just the luck that they’re workin’ worth.

Alright, let her sleep then. He sits down in one of the chairs, finds his crossbow and holds it in his lap. He’s not quite keeping watch— they’re secure enough inside that he doesn’t feel like he has to— but he feels like he’s waiting for something. For the candles to burn out, maybe, or the sun to rise.

——

When it’s all-the-way light out and Beth’s still asleep, Daryl slips out of the room and up the stairs. The kitchen is brighter than the chapel and it’s got a better view of the graveyard outside. He leans up against the window, looks at what’s out there.

The yellow flowers that he’d placed on that gravestone aren’t there anymore-- must’ve blown off somewhere in the wind. Still, there’s flowers all over the yard. Spots of yellow and pink and white, growing uninhibited. Before all this, he thinks, people woulda called flowers like that weeds. They woulda torn ‘em up, threw ‘em away. 

He searches the grass for walkers or people, not sure which would be worse. But there’s no one there. They are safe here, he thinks, at least relatively. Maybe they could even stay here a while. Until whoever left that stash comes back _._

But maybe they won’t. Or maybe they will, and... well, Daryl would kill them, if he had to. But maybe, _maybe_...

_“Where’d you learn to play like that, anyway?” he asked, lying there with his feet on the rim of the coffin. Beth swiveled on on the piano bench, looked his way._

_“Play like what?”_

_Goddamn, why’d she have to look at him like that? With those eyes all soft and searching. Sometimes she looks at him like there’s something she’s trying to find. Whatever it is, he thinks it probably ain't there. “I’unno, like... good. Or whatever,” he said. And fuck, if he didn’t sound like a teenage dirtbag._

_Beth smiled with half her mouth. “You think I’m good?”_

_Fuck. “Said I’unno. Why you gotta make this difficult?”_

_Beth laughed. And fuck again, ‘cause that lightning in his chest just kept getting stronger. “My mama taught me,” she said. “Been playing since I was four.”_

_When Daryl was four the only things he’d been playing were “don’t poke the sleeping bear” and “the best-stay-real-damn-quiet game” and “hide and pray that he don’t seek.” He swallowed that thought down._

_“Wish I coulda met your mama,” he said. “Your dad, he always made her sound real nice.”_

_“She was,” Beth said. “She was warm and kind and...” Her gaze dropped down to the floor, for just a second. Then back to him. “She woulda liked you.”_

_Woulda liked him? “Nah. No rich church lady ever liked me.”_

_Beth rolled her eyes. “She was not a rich church lady,” she said. “She was... well, I dunno. She was my mama.”_

_Yeah, he really wishes he coulda met her. “Was she pretty like you?” he asked._

_Somehow, impossibly, Beth’s always-wide eyes went wider. “You think I’m pretty?”_

_Fuck. Probably shouldn’t have said that. He scrambled for words. “I think you’re fishin’ for compliments, askin’ all a these questions, I’m just tryna to listen to you play.”_

_Beth turned back to the piano keys, still smiling. She started to play, to sing. And now that he’s thinking about it a morning later, he’s pretty sure was still singing when he fell asleep._

Daryl is hungry, but decides he’ll wait. His own mama, God bless her cigarette-blackened heart, she’d’ve have some real choice words for him if he didn’t let the lady go first. Almost instilled some manners in him, the woman did. Maybe if she’d been sober enough to try.

What Daryl does instead is set the table. Takes two bottles of soda, two jars each of peanut butter and pig’s feet, some vegetables in a can. Sets ‘em down and arranges ‘em all nice. Place settings, one for him and one for Beth.

Some quiet part of him thinks about maybe going outside and picking more flowers, finding something to use for a vase. _Breakfast tables are s’posed to be pretty_ , that part of him thinks. _Pretty like her._

——

Beth’s just waking up when Daryl gets back downstairs. He nods at her. “Mornin’”

“Good morning,” she says back. She stretches her limbs out and yawns. “You sleep well?”

“Yeah.”

“Like the dead?”

There’s a wink in her voice, and when he looks at her she’s smiling like she’s damn pleased with herself. Goddamn brat.

“Piss off,” he grumbles. “Girl, you toss ‘n’ turn all night.”

Beth tilts her head. “Do I?” She’s sitting on the edge of the couch and she swings her legs back and forth— yeah, he could not count how many times she’s kicked him doing that in her sleep.

“Sometimes,” he tells her. “Not last night, though. You were pretty calm.”

“Huh, I never knew,” she says. She hops off the sofa, lands on both feet. “Anyway, it’s dark in here. Mind if I open the blinds?”

“Nah, go for it.”

“Thanks.”

Beth walks up to the windows, pulls the curtains aside and tugs the string that makes the blinds fly to ceiling. All the light comes in all at once, so bright it almost hurts Daryl’s eyes. It’s pure sunshine, and it pours out all over her face, liquid gold that drips off of her eyelashes and soaks through her hair. She looks like she’s fucking glowing. _Like an angel_ , he thinks. Ironic ain’t it, that he’s the one wearing wings on his back.

 _Fuck, she's beautiful_ , he thinks. _Wish I could kiss her_. And then: _well shit, that came outta nowhere_.

Except it didn’t, really, did it? It’s been there for a while. Couldn’t say just when, but it’s been in him. It was there last night, when he lit those candles and he watched her play. There when he fell asleep to the sound of her voice and thought _maybe_ , if this is only way he falls asleep for the rest of his sorry life, maybe that’d be okay. It was there at the moonshine shack, there in the trunk of the car, there when they ran from the smoking ruins of the only real home he'd ever known and he'd thought: _well at least I found her_. It was there in him this morning, long before the first light broke.

Yeah, it’s been there a long long time.

He’s staring, and she turns her head towards him, blinks. “What are you looking at?”

 _Shit._ “Nothin’,” he says. “Just...”

And damn, this is why they call it “falling in love”, isn’t it? ‘Cause it’s a feeling like at any given moment the whole roof of it might just cave right in and come crashing down on your head. Leave you dizzy, seeing sunspots, seeing sky.

“Just the sky, that’s all.”

Beth raises an eyebrow but doesn’t push. “Okay. Whatever you say.”

“You, uh, you hungry? Wanna go eat?”

“Sure.”

And she closes the blinds again before they leave— that little bit of sun, it’s not worth the risk of being seen. She blows all of the candles out too, except for one on the windowsill. _Sophia’s_. Daryl picks it up, reads the words that are carved on the glass:

_In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. Matthew 5.16._

He blows it out but he still thinks he sees a light on.

_Maybe it’s just her._


End file.
